Melbourne Symphony Orchestra Meet the Orchestra: Big Bang!

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1 Teacher s Pack by Fraser Trainer, Oliver Cox and Owen Gunnell This May, the will present a brand new, action-packed children s concert featuring some of the most fantastic orchestral music. The program is: Bongo Fury Bolero Bachianas Braileiras No.2: The Little Train of the Caipira The Four Seasons: Summer third movement (Presto) Breaking Silence excerpt (one movement) The Big Bang (Kalehleh) Symphonic Dances from West Side Story: Mambo O DUO RAVEL VILLA-LOBOS VIVALDI TRAINER Trad. Arr. TRAINER BERNSTEIN This pack has been written especially to enhance the concert experience for the children, and contains background notes for each piece in the program in addition to a number of projects for you to explore together in class. This pack simply presents some musical ideas for you to explore. Please feel free to modify activities as you see fit. If preparation time is short, it is absolutely essential that you carry out the preparation for The Big Bang (Kalehleh), for which separate notes, sheet music and audio files have been provided. Listening to a full size symphony orchestra live for the first time is a very special event for children. Combined with fun, creative project work in school, we re sure that your class will love the experience of being composers, performers and discerning listeners. Have fun and see you in May! Fraser, Olly, Owen and the MSO 1. Bongo Fury O Duo We wrote this piece for our first ever year at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2002, and we ve been playing it ever since. It s a catchy rhythmic piece, using grooves from Brazil, Cuba and Africa. Part of the reason the piece works is because it s actually very simple. It uses only two pairs of Bongos, two cowbells, an egg shaker and the stage! We thought it would be great for you to try and create your own Bongo fury as a classroom piece, with the instruments you already have or instruments that you could make yourself These ideas are taken from Bongo Fury but stripped right down to the way we started writing the piece.

2 WHAT YOU NEED: A WHISTLE SHAKERS WOODEN INSTRUMENTS (WOODBLOCKS,CLAVES, ETC.) METAL INSTRUMENTS (COWBELLS OR SIMILAR SOUNDING INSTRUMENTS, NOT TOO RINGY!) A BIG DRUM OR TWO (A FLOOR TOM, A BASS DRUM OR A SURDO) SMALL DRUMS (HANDHELD DRUMS) GETTING STARTED: Depending on how ambitious you re feeling(!), split the group into four (or fewer) smaller groups playing on separate sets of instruments as follows: Group 1 Shakers Group 2 Woods Group 3 Metals Group 4 Little Drums Then either an adult (you!) or a rhythmically confident student should be put on the big drum to keep everyone in time. MAKING MUISIC: The whistle is a must! Give four blows on the whistle to start and to stop each time. Give everyone a warning by raising your hand in the air or use any other appropriate signal! Before handing out the instruments, you can always try the groups clapping their rhythms, but still starting and stopping after four whistles. BONGO FURY RHYTHMS: (Please refer to Ex. 1.1 and 1.2 on the Score Examples sheet) Ex 1.1 BIG DRUM, SHAKERS, WOODS, METALS AND LITTLE DRUM RHYTHMS You could try some four-beat solos too by pointing at someone to warn them that they are about to have a solo, and then blowing four whistles to indicate everyone else should stop for four beats while the selected student plays four beats on their own, and then bring everyone back in again. Then add in any other ideas like shouting, playing faster, slower, louder, quieter, etc. For a quick and impressive ending, try the Rhythm pattern in Ex For a bit of help, see our YouTube instruction clip: ex=2 To see how far these simple ideas got us have a look at our Bongo Fury performance:

3 2. Bolero Maurice Ravel Maurice Ravel ( ), was a French impressionist composer, who was famed for his melodies and instrumental textures. However, Bolero is almost the complete opposite to this. Ravel once said that it was orchestral tissue without music. It pretty much uses the same melody throughout, passing it around the orchestra, building in volume and excitement until the rest of the percussion crashes in towards the end. Some say this is the composer going more and more mad as he was writing! Because the piece is really all about orchestration (choosing which instruments should play together) it s a great introduction to the instruments of the orchestra. One of the most noticeable aspects of this fantastic piece is the snare drum playing the rhythm outlined in Ex. 2.1 on your Score Examples sheet. It s a tricky rhythm, but try it using your fingers and thumb.. (Thumb is 1, little finger is 5 etc.) TRY THIS! Try drumming this rhythm on instruments or even on different surfaces around your classroom (the desk, the chair, the floor etc). See how the sound changes Although the sound is quiet it should still be precise. Perhaps you could invent some rhythms of your own to go with Ravel s infectious rhythm? Like many great pieces of music from this period, Bolero was inspired by a painting it s not of a beautiful landscape or a piece of Parisian architecture though, it s a half-naked portrait of Ida Rubinstein, the dancer who commissioned the piece. This period of music is a great way to explore art and its relationship to music. Find any repertoire from composers such as Ravel, Debussyor Satie, and see how the children visualise the music maybe the next Monet is in your class! 3. The Little Train of the Caipira Heitor Villa-Lobos Villa-Lobos ( ) is probably the most well-known Brazilian composer of the 20 th century. His music is influenced by Brazilian street music, improvised tangos and polkas. Needless to say percussion is quite a feature of his music, and that s why we love it even more! The Little Train is a movement from a collection of works called Bachianas Brasileiras, and it is supposed to depict a journey on one of Brazil s many tiny local railway lines across the mountains through which Villa-Lobos travelled. The train is brought to life by the sounds from the orchestra tooting woodwinds, creaking and shaking percussive sounds. There are also some soaring string tunes to enjoy.

4 4. The Four Seasons: Summer third movement (Presto) Antonio Vivaldi Antonio Vivaldi was an Italian composer from Venice who lived a long time ago. He was born in 1678 (and died in 1741), which means that if he was alive today he'd be 335! He was known as the Red Priest because of his long red hair. One of his most famous pieces is called The Four Seasons; it s a series of four violin concertos, each representing a different season of the year. A concerto is a piece for orchestra, with a soloist playing their instrument at the front, (watch out for O Duo playing a movement from Fraser's percussion concerto, Breaking Silence, in this concert too). The movement of The Four Seasons you will hear in this concert is from Summer, but it is not sunny weather in this piece, it is a thunderstorm! Listen out for the violins, both the soloist and also the orchestra, playing very fast repeating notes (called tremolos) as well as cascading runs of notes representing the torrential rain pouring down. 5. Breaking Silence Fraser Trainer Breaking Silence is a brand new concerto for two percussion soloists and orchestra. It was composed especially for O Duo to play in this concert by Fraser Trainer. The piece has four movements called Earshot, At the Double, Breaking Silence (Secret Song) and Hook. As it is a piece that features percussion there are a large numbers of percussion instruments of all different shapes and sizes on display. There are tuned instruments, like vibraphone and marimba. Different kinds of drums like bass drums, congas, bongos and tomtoms, and smaller percussion instruments like shakers, whistles, maracas and even a biscuit-tin and pieces of paper! The piece starts with a wake-up call. The orchestra is very loud with all the instruments playing bell-like notes in the same register while the two percussionists play a duel on bass drums. The percussionists then move to share a marimba, in which they perform intricate patterns before the instruments gradually reduce in numbers and get quieter so that the music eventually fades away into the distance. The second movement is for the two percussion soloists only. The music is theatrical and dynamic. It s like a game being played by the two performers who compete with each other to play a desk bell. The third movement is mostly very, very quiet. Soon the orchestra become much more percussive and the soloists play lyrical melodic music on a set of ten cowbells! Contrasting this is a vigorous dance, a ritual of two equal and opposing teams competing against each other above a scary sounding tuba, cellos and basses (the referee!).

5 The final movement (Hook) is a faster dance with repeating rhythms and virtuosic drumming. The orchestra s music gradually gets shaken-up, bent and broken before a repeat of the opening wake-up call brings us back down to earth with a bump. Fraser Trainer is a composer, performer and teacher who lives in London. He used to play trumpet in his local youth orchestra and wind band as well as keyboards in a school rock band. Fraser has written music for many orchestras and ensembles around the world, including the London Sinfonietta, BBC Proms, and even for the opening of a London Underground station. Fraser loves listening to lots of different kinds of music from very old music composed hundreds of years ago to contemporary classical music, jazz, and popular forms like hip-hop, electronica and funk. All these different types of music feed into the music he writes for the orchestra. He likes to watch cricket on his days off. Here are some Breaking Silence-inspired activities you could try in your classroom: BUILDING RHYTHMIC SKILLS 1. Get everyone to click (or clap) a steady beat or pulse together. Encourage the group to still hear and feel the pulse even when you all stop clicking. Try out some different speeds A group sense of pulse is really important for the next exercise: 2. Clap a four-beat pattern to the group. Get them to clap it back. (Call and Response.) Continue this and gradually introduce other body sounds, chest beats, thigh slaps, finger clicking, rhythms on the knees, or even the voice. 3. Get everyone in the group to learn the following rhythm (refer to Ex 3.1 on the Score Examples sheet). Let s call this Unison Rhythm 1. It is made up of two body sounds: chest beats and claps. The flow of the rhythm goes over fourbeats like this: slow quick quick slow slow You might need to build this up slowly by playing the chest beats on their own first and then adding in the claps one by one. Take time to build it up and practice it. If you find this easy enough, here s a more advanced version of the rhythm set over a fourbar phrase (Refer to Ex 3.2). This introduces finger clicks and thigh slaps. COMPOSING 4. When everyone is comfortable with the core rhythm, divide the class into smaller groups and ask each group to invent their own rhythm pattern using any body rhythm sounds they like. It must be played in unison together and it should be a pattern which repeats. When this is done listen to each group perform the rhythms on their own. 5. Try making a body rhythm piece with the following structure: (A = Unison Rhythm 1 B, C, & D etc = Small group invented rhythms) A B A C A D A etc Think carefully about what order to put B, C and D in. Can you find a good way of ending?

6 6. Try transferring the body rhythms onto percussion instruments. Think carefully about how you might divide up the instruments for the different groups and their rhythms. CREATING YOUR OWN BREAKING SILENCE 7. The following rhythm is a drum kit rhythm which is heard many times in the last movement of Breaking Silence (Hook). We re going to learn to play it in two parts (refer to Ex 3.2) You can do this by either clapping the patterns or playing them on instruments. 8. Once the group are comfortable with this try adding two more rhythms (see Ex 3.3) Practice playing all four rhythms together a set number of times and then stopping all together at the end of the last cycle: four times, eight times ten times etc. Let s call this Section A. Try organising your instruments so that each group has a particular sound made from separate instrumental groups like metal, wood, small drums and large drums etc. 9. For Section B we want to create a section of music where pulses pass from one group across to another. Keep the class in their four groups and try playing (or passing) four quick pulses (quavers) around each of the four groups in turn. (Refer to Ex 3.4) The music should move around the room! Try it without any gap in between each group. Once this is comfortable try with three pulses (quavers), then two and then one. See if you can join all this up so that it goes: (Refer to Ex. 3.5) 10. Section C is a strong unison rhythm. (Refer to Ex 3.6 Unison Rhythm 2) It s slightly longer and is an odd number of beats (nine). You could think of this in the following way: slow slow quick quick (rest) slow quick quick slow slow (rest) Finding suitable words that fit the rhythm can help you to remember longer rhythm patterns. 11. Finally, discuss with the class a possible structure for the music. We have three sections: A, B and C, which can be played in any order. Also, some sections could be played more than once and Section B could even be broken up into four separate repeating segments (four pulses passed around, 3, 2 and 1 [I do not understand. Can this be clearer?]) or played altogether as we did before For a bit of help, see our YouTube instruction clip: ex=1 Now you re ready to perform your piece Good luck!

7 6. The Big Bang (Kalehleh) Trad. Arr. Fraser Trainer The Big Bang is a song for everyone in the hall to sing. It s called Kalehleh and is a West African welcome song, sung as a call and response. Fraser has orchestrated the music so that we can all sing with the orchestra. It s got lots of fun energetic rhythms to sing and dance to as well as some body percussion! Please refer to the separate notes, sheet music and audio files provided to see what you need to do to perform Kalehleh with the MSO and O Duo 7. Symphonic Dances from West Side Story: Mambo Leonard Bernstein Leonard Bernstein ( ) was an American composer and conductor from New York, whose most famous piece of music is the score for the stage and film musical West Side Story. In this concert, you ll hearthe Mambo from West Side Story, which is a fast and energetic Latin American dance, originally from Cuba. There s lots of rhythm, plenty of percussion, and even a bit of shouting as well! A lot of the rhythms used in the Mambo are similar to the ones we use in Bongo Fury, but obviously with a whole orchestra playing it sounds a lot more impressive and exciting! Here are some ideas you can try to add on to your 'Bongo Fury' piece to Mambo it up a little bit. One of the key rhythms in Mambo is called the clave. This is a Spanish word meaning key, as it is the key to the whole piece and locks everything together. Here it is, with a handy way of remembering it, especially the tricky bit near the start. (Refer Ex 4.1) Once you've got the hang of this, you can add it to your drumming piece, and it will add a nice swing to the overall rhythm. There is also some (organised) shouting in this piece. The orchestra have to shout the word 'Mambo' at certain points, and we would like you to help them out when you come to the concert. To practice, you can add the shout of 'Mambo' to your piece as well. You will need to invent a signal to let everyone know that the shout is coming up, then blow four whistles to introduce the following short call (it s the same rhythm as the clave.)(refer to Ex 4.2) Now, as we mentioned earlier, the 'Mambo' is originally a dance, so we have got some easy steps which will get you moving and hopefully put the finishing touches to our little percussion extravaganza. Moving whilst playing can help keep you in time, is really fun and will definitely give you a bit of Latin American swagger. Try this step to get you started. Begin with feet apart. Then, on beat 1 step your right foot in to meet your left foot. On beat 2 move it back out to the right. Beat 3 step your left foot in to meet your right, and finally beat 4 move it back out to the left. Repeat again and again! Check out our Mambo YouTube instruction clip if you need any help. ex=3